A Global Seminar with speakers Maria Monica Wihardja, Mohamad Ikhsan and Vivi Alatas.
Event Details: Global Seminar Series
- Date: Thursday 24 July 2025
- Time: 10:00 - 11:30am WIB | 1:00 - 2:30pm AEST
- Join via Zoom: http://bit.ly/gs_indonesia
About the Seminar:
Join our expert speakers Maria Monica Wihardja, Mohamad Ikhsan and Vivi Alatas in the ANU Indonesia Project Global Seminar Series "Times are changing: Can Indonesia stay the course?" as they discuss their forthcoming paper in the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (BIES).
Abstract:
President Prabowo Subianto’s first 10 months in office have been marked by shifting domestic and global dynamics. Domestically, his populist, project-driven and fiscally expansionary approach has been unfolding in an inherited fragile institutional environment, putting pressure on Indonesia’s longstanding foundational pillars of economic resilience: fiscal discipline, central bank independence, private sector dynamism and a vibrant middle class. Externally, China’s growing dominance in global manufacturing—the so-called ‘second China shock’—alongside receding US global leadership and a fraying rules-based global order, has heightened uncertainty. Whether Indonesia can stay the course and navigate changing domestic and global dynamics depends on its policy responses and willingness to take deep structural reform by restoring economic policy credibility, recalibrating the state’s role in development, rebuilding the middle class with a renewed social contract, maintaining sufficient economic buffers and enhancing the quality of policy decision-making and public communication.
Event Speakers
Maria Monica Wihardja
Maria Monica Wihardja is a Visiting Fellow and Co-Coordinator of the Media, Technology and Society Programme at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at NUS. She serves as a member of the East Asia Forum’s Editorial Board, the Asian-Pacific Economic Literature’s Editorial Advisory Board and the Centre for Indonesian Policy Studies’ Board of Directors
Mohamad Ikhsan
Mohamad Ikhsan is a Professor of Economics at the University of Indonesia and former Director of the Institute for Economic and Social Research (LPEM UI). He was an advisor to two Vice Presidents of the Republic of Indonesia, the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, and the Minister of SOEs, and served with ADBI, AMRO, and IFPRI. He also held commissioner roles at SOEs.
Vivi Alatas
Vivi Alatas is CEO of Asakreativita, a consulting and Edtech company that she established in 2020. Formerly she was a Lead Economist of World Bank where she led a team of seasoned local and international economists in producing several flagship reports for national and global audiences. She also has written several journal papers on poverty, inequality and labour issues.